Cory Lidle, One Year Later

By one estimate, more than $63 million worth of lawsuits now trail the estate of Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, seeking compensation for injuries, damages or insurance payouts that followed his plane’s crash into a New York City apartment building.

A year after the wreck, a federal safety panel has concluded that Lidle and his flight instructor died because they misjudged a turn, but the finding has done little to settle the legal fights that now stretch across the country.

According to the article, Lidle’s estate isn’t nearly large enough to pay all the claims against it… unless, of course, Lidle’s widow wins her $100 million lawsuit against the plane’s manufacturer.

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“A year after the wreck, a federal safety panel has concluded that Lidle and his flight instructor died because they misjudged a turn, but the finding has done little to settle the legal fights that now stretch across the country.”

What so many frustrated observers don’t understand is that “facts” as laypersons understand them mean nothing to a court. This can be a good thing, for instance, if the townspeople considered it “fact” that the sun revolved around the earth – and wanted a scientist put to death for saying otherwise. But too often, it’s a bad thing, as this case shows. Lidle’s estate could very easily find an “expert” to dispute the government.

Once again, litigation abuse is rooted not so much in the process – which is laborious, wasteful, expensive and counterintuitive by design – but in the immoral and anti-social motivations of litigants. That’s why, while I would welcome some procedure reform, I think that lawsuit abuse ultimately requires “soul reform” that our current society isn’t capable of. Where it’s every man for himself, nobody cares about the expense saddled on others. Lawsuit abuse is indicative of larger patterns of social decay.

This is the kind of thing that very nearly finished off light aircraft manufacture in this country back in the 80’s and why it is almost prohibitively expensive to fly these days. This in turn has been detrimental to air safety because staying safe means staying sharp and maintaining your skills. You do that by flying often. I’ve linked this post at my blog where I have a few things of my own to say about the crash.